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Is Autonomy Turning UCC Authorized Ministers and Churchgoers into Turtles?

After listening to endless media debates over fake news and alternative facts, Russian intrigues in our politics and elections, and how angry and divided America has become, I thought about the social atomization in our communities, and how so many churches and Christian people are cut off from one another. Then I thought briefly about the 500th Anniversary of the Protestant Reformation which we have been celebrating this year, and about Martin Luther’s courageous devotion to truth, and his principled stand against religious legalism and corruption. But mostly, I thought about Harvard University political scientist Robert D. Putnam’s essay, “Bowling Alone: America’s Declining Social Capital” (Journal of Democracy 6:1, January 1995, pp. 65-78).

Trust in public institutions has collapsed, Putnam explains. “In the 1950s and 1960s, 75 percent of Americans said that they trusted their government to do the right thing.” Today, only 19 percent say they do (Putnam, interviewed by Russ Edgerton, American Association for Higher Education, 1995).

Putnam is not simply entertaining nostalgia for a bygone era when he says this. “School performance, public health, crime rates, race relations, community development, teen suicide, economic productivity, even simple human happiness—all are demonstrably affected by how (and whether) we connect with our family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers” (“Lonely in America” [Putnam interviewed by Sage Stossel], The Atlantic, September 21, 2000).

In the past, we Americans were not as isolated from one another as we are now. “When Tocqueville visited the United States in the 1830s, it was [our] propensity for civic association”—our “social capital”—“that impressed him as the key to mak[ing American] democracy work.” If a neighbor’s barn burned down, the entire community came together to help rebuild it (“Bowling Alone,” 1995, pp. 65-66).

For Putnam, social capital is crucial. This term “refers to [the] networks, norms, and trust that facilitate cooperation for mutual benefit.” It encompasses our “connections [to] our friends, neighbors, community, and institutions.” Indeed, “life [is much] easier in a community blessed with substantial social capital,” Putnam argues—but social capital is in short supply in America today (“Does Diversity Really Work?” [Putnam, interviewed by Michel Martin], National Public Radio, August 15, 2007, and “Bowling Alone,” 1995, p. 67).

Over several decades, Putnam has noted fundamental shifts in the United States, in:

Political Engagement. Since “the 1960s, voter turnout [has declined] by nearly a quarter. The number of Americans who report [having] ‘attended a public meeting on town or school affairs in the past year’ has fallen by [over] a third.” We are not reading or watching the news the way we used to, and our “direct engagement in politics and government has [deteriorated] over the last generation,” despite our relatively high levels of education (“Bowling Alone,” 1995, pp. 68-69).

Informal social and civic ties. “Virtually all leisure activities that involve doing something with someone else, from playing [team sports] to playing chamber music, are declining.” Americans still go bowling, but increasingly they are “bowling alone.” They no longer participate in civic and fraternal organizations such as Rotary, the Masons, or the Boy Scouts in large numbers. Labor union membership—once “the most common organizational affiliation [of] American workers—has been falling for decades.” PTA participation and church attendance have also dropped precipitously. Today, “the only act of membership” that many church and civic organization members perform is “writing a check for dues, or perhaps reading a newsletter.” Many will not intentionally associate with other members, let alone attend meetings (“Bowling Alone,” 1995, pp. 69, 71).

“Tolerance and trust. Americans are more tolerant of one another than they were in previous generations, [but] they trust [each o]ther less.” There is an increase in dishonesty; “employment opportunities for police, lawyers, and security personnel [have boomed] as people increasingly turn to the courts and the police” to settle grievances (Putnam, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community [New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000], cited in “Harvard Kennedy School Press Release,” April 28, 2000).

Meanwhile, television viewing has “privatized our leisure time”—and may have supplanted real community (“Bowling Alone,” 1995, p. 75). Ditto for our use of smart phones, the Internet, e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and other technologies. Why drive to a school board meeting, when you can stay home in sweat pants and a t-shirt and “attend” the same meeting on Zoom, or discuss it on Facebook?

As a pastor who is concerned about the future of our churches and denomination, I worry about the loss of social capital and the exaggerated sense of autonomy that I see in churches and among my fellow Authorized Ministers. Here in the New York Conference, I’ve watched neighboring UCC congregations engage in contentious cross-town rivalries with each other. I’ve looked on as pastors isolated themselves from our denomination, engaged in competitive interactions with other UCC churches and pastoral colleagues, and avoided participating in collaborative ministries with them. I’ve seen monthly ministers’ meetings atrophy as Authorized Ministers explained how they “didn’t need the fellowship,” or were “too busy,” or “didn’t like traveling long distances” to attend. And I’ve observed our Conference Staff struggle to get reluctant pastors to join Communities of Practice. What gives? Somehow, I don’t think we in the New York Conference are alone in these lapses. When did we Authorized Ministers and our congregants become turtles—hiding from each other in our shells?

Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber is persuasive when she writes that “trying not to need others isn’t about strength and independence.” It isn’t saying, “I want to make my own decisions. I am strong as hell.” Rather, “it’s about fear. To allow myself to need someone else is to [make] myself [vulnerable] to be betrayed or look weak” (Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People [New York: Convergent, 2015], p. 99).

Perhaps we should heed spiritual director Barbara A. Sheehan, S.P., when she writes that “the Christian community is a community of care.” We are all “called to companion [our] brothers and sisters along the paths of spiritual growth. Companionship is a ministry and an art [that is] much needed today among Christians. People yearn for meaning and spiritual connection in [a] disconnected and seemingly meaningless world” (Partners in Covenant: The Art of Spiritual Companionship [Cleveland: Pilgrim, 2010], pp. vii-viii, p. 3).

Is it time for us to discard autonomy from our polity? If you’ve ever taken a UCC History and Polity course, you know that we in the United Church of Christ understand the twin concepts of covenant and autonomy as coexisting in a kind of living, symbiotic balance with one another: local UCC churches are “independent” in that they don’t answer to any higher authority, yet they are also “in covenant” with one another and the “Wider Church”—our Associations, Conferences, and the National Church.

Historically and theologically, the doctrine of the priesthood of all believers is an important and enduring part of our Reformation tradition. Five centuries ago, this core conviction was mobilized by Martin Luther and the Protestant Christian movement in sharp reaction to the abusive theologies and practices of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. And the related concept of local church autonomy has stood like a bulwark against the “Episcopal” polities of some Protestant denominations that stressed hierarchy and the authority of high church officials over local churches and pastors. This was, and remains, commendable. But today these core ideas have morphed into a kind of religious rugged individualism. But “not needing anybody,” and “going it alone” are a lonely way to be, and amount to tilting at windmills. By all means, let us continue to celebrate the Protestant Reformation—but let us celebrate together, in collegiality and friendship! And let us stop waging private wars against popes and bishops, and fighting five-hundred-year-old ghosts.

Rev. Chris Xenakis is a UCC pastor currently serving Groton Community Church (UCC) in Central New York. In addition, he is an adjunct lecturer at SUNY-Cortland, teaching courses this year on world politics, democracy, U.S. foreign policy and multiculturalism. Chris has written numerous books and articles, which can be found on his blog.

I’m afraid I don’t follow. I invest a great deal of time and energy in peer engagement – here in little old Kalamazoo, Michigan, I’m blessed to be a member of three different clergy-to-clergy organizations, two ecumenical and one interfaith. My staff and I regularly travel to attend conferences organized by other churches.
Perhaps the criticism is less that clergy (especially young clergy) are disengaging with peer groups and more so that they are disengaging from UCC-specific peer groups. This, I would agree with. It is increasingly difficult to justify the time and effort required to prop up aging intradenominational labor when the efforts seem to produce very little reward.

The last time I called on my region for help during a capital campaign, their frank response was, “let us know if you find a way to raise some money.”

I have been saying, at various amplitudes, and over the course of the past decade, that the UCC *must* stop focusing so myopically on serving the clergy and engage, instead, with the lay leadership of her member churches.

The truth is that clergy leave. Full stop.
They leave their churches, they change regions and denominations, and they frequently leave the practice of ministry altogether. And they take with them the monetary and temporal investments of the denomination.

You know who stays?
The church administrators, the Sunday school teachers, the moderators and council presidents, the liturgists and the folks who know their church inside-and-out.
The laity.
When there is a pastoral crisis in a UCC church and a regional minister suddenly appears, as if from a complete vacuum, and says, “I’m here to help!” the response from the congregation is more often than not, “and who, precisely, are you?”
That same regional minister that invited the now distant pastor to lunch, took them to retreats, invested in them, is now faced with an army of strangers. And why, then, would they trust the region’s opinion about who they ought to call as their next pastor?

Stop courting pastors. Invest all of our denomination’s remaining, dwindling resources in the laity. Hold regional moderator’s conferences, free of cost. Take the church admins out for lunch. Offer free prayer groups and sessions and workshops and what-not for the *laity*. The regional minister should know every local church leader on a first-name basis. When a new pastor is called, the regional minister should be the one setting up luncheons and dinners with local church leadership.

The clergy will be okay. They have the resources they need. A clergyperson is not a church.
Invest in the laity.

Nathan—you are making my point. I suspect that the “bowling alone” phenomenon is impairing our laity, our authorized ministers, and our denominational leaders. You are not the first person I’ve heard say that “the clergy leave, while the laity stay.” You are also not the first person to tell me of being disappointed by clergy and by denominational staff. At the risk of sounding reductionistic, I do think that one of the factors that exacerbates all of these problems is our isolation. That and the fact that we don’t seem to trust one another.

I certainly agree with you that anytime clergy are interacting with other clergy—of whatever denominational stripe—in their communities and regions, that is a good thing. I did not mean to imply that UCC clergy should only interact with other UCC clergy.

Having come to the United Church of Christ relatively late in life (at age 40, in 1990), I probably have the passion of a convert—I love the United Church of Christ, and believe firmly that its ecumenism and its “extravagant welcome” are unique and much-needed in our society today.

I agree with you that the lay leadership of churches is absolutely essential—and I also believe that ministerial leadership are absolutely needed.

Thanks for your comment; what you wrote is absolutely vital, and needs to be read in our Church.

Yeah, well, I mean, the whole argument that Phyllis Tickle and the Emergent Church movement made was that every five hundred years or so in church history, the Church experiences an all-encompassing wave of renewal—a “Great Awakening”-type revolution—and the last one was Martin Luther’s Protestant Reformation. In practical terms, many church scholars, sociologists, denominational leaders, and pastor friends—people you and I know and trust—are saying that the traditional church—and its old tried and true techniques that used to work well (like Sunday School, “Bring-A-Friend-to-Church Sundays,” and stewardship campaigns) just aren’t working anymore.

Something’s changed.

So yes, I wonder if local church autonomy—a doctrine that was put in place, in large part, as a corrective to the ecclesiastical abuses of hierarchical church structures—hasn’t run its course. I wonder if, today, we haven’t turned autonomy into something it was never intended to be—a justification for remaining isolated.

As I replied to another comment, I also wonder whether, over the past sixty or seventy years, we haven’t merged the idea of local church autonomy with the great American myth of “rugged individualism”—think of the lone Marlboro cowboy riding high in the plains, independent, capable, heroic, needing no one.

I hear the faint strains of Simon and Garfunkel’s “I Am a Rock,” or perhaps the Beatles’ “Eleanor Rigby” (“All the lonely people . . . .”) playing through my head.

I don’t know, Reedbaer, what do you think causes so many churches and pastors to “bowl alone?”

A thoughtful piece — but I would be more convinced about the part “autonomy” plays if it could be shown how those in other communions are successfully countering the “bowling alone” phenomena, to say nothing of the atomizing effects of “social media.”

You certainly make a good point. Many Protestant denominations and communities today cherish local church autonomy in their polities, so “bowling alone”—and the twin phenomena of isolated churches and lonely, competitive clergy—are hardly the unique province of the United Church of Christ. And I certainly do not mean to take on Martin Luther, or to embrace “episcopal” (hierarchical or connectional) polities at the expense of more congregational polities!

Years ago, in a past life I was a navy chaplain. For fifteen years, I rubbed shoulders with a Heinz-57 variety of priests, rabbis, and ministers, representing virtually every American Judeo-Christian tradition. And my experience was that many of us felt isolated and lonely—especially when we were off-duty. It made no difference whether we were on “shore duty” or “sea duty—or whether we were out at sea or our ships were in home port. It also made no difference what denomination or theological tradition we represented. Roman Catholic chaplains had a natural camaraderie with their brother priests; Evangelical chaplains “hung out” with other Evangelical chaplains; and chaplains from Protestant Mainline denominations developed solid friendships with one another, but at the end of the day, many of us felt lonely. Of course, military service is a unique and high-stress environment, and perhaps cannot be compared with civilian ministry. But my point is that many of us felt as if we were “bowling alone”—regardless of our denominational traditions.

Perhaps there is something uniquely American about the “bowling alone” phenomenon. It may have something to do with the hoary old myth of “rugged individualism”—the solitary Marlboro cowboy riding high, on the plains.